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Top Bush aides pushed for Guantnamo torture
Senior officials bypassed army chief to introduce interrogation methods
Richard Norton-Taylor
The Guardian,
Saturday April 19 2008
This article appeared in the Guardian on Saturday April 19 2008 on p1 of the
Top stories section. It was last updated at 00:13 on April 19 2008.
US military chief General Richard Myers
US military chief General Richard Myers. Photographer: Khalil Mazraawi/AFP
America's most senior general was "hoodwinked" by top Bush administration
officials determined to push through aggressive interrogation techniques of
terror suspects held at Guantnamo Bay, leading to the US military
abandoning its age-old ban on the cruel and inhumane treatment of prisoners,
the Guardian reveals today.
General Richard Myers, chairman of the US joint chiefs of staff from 2001 to
2005, wrongly believed that inmates at Guantnamo and other prisons were
protected by the Geneva conventions and from abuse tantamount to torture.
The way he was duped by senior officials in Washington, who believed the
Geneva conventions and other traditional safeguards were out of date, is
disclosed in a devastating account of their role, extracts of which appear
in today's Guardian.
In his new book, Torture Team, Philippe Sands QC, professor of law at
University College London, reveals that:
Senior Bush administration figures pushed through previously outlawed
measures with the aid of inexperienced military officials at Guantnamo.
Myers believes he was a victim of "intrigue" by top lawyers at the
department of justice, the office of vice-president Dick Cheney, and at
Donald Rumsfeld's defence department.
The Guantnamo lawyers charged with devising interrogation techniques were
inspired by the exploits of Jack Bauer in the American TV series 24.
Myers wrongly believed interrogation techniques had been taken from the
army's field manual.
The lawyers, all political appointees, who pushed through the interrogation
techniques were Alberto Gonzales, David Addington and William Haynes. Also
involved were Doug Feith, Rumsfeld's under-secretary for policy, and Jay
Bybee and John Yoo, two assistant attorney generals.
The revelations have sparked a fierce response in the US from those familiar
with the contents of the book, and who are determined to establish
accountability for the way the Bush administration violated international
and domestic law by sanctioning prisoner abuse and torture.
The Bush administration has tried to explain away the ill-treatment of
detainees at Guantnamo Bay and Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq by blaming junior
officials. Sands' book establishes that pressure for aggressive and cruel
treatment of detainees came from the top and was sanctioned by the most
senior lawyers.
Myers was one top official who did not understand the implications of what
was being done. Sands, who spent three hours with the former general, says
he was "confused" about the decisions that were taken.
Myers mistakenly believed that new techniques recommended by Haynes and
authorised by Rumsfeld in December 2002 for use by the military at
Guantnamo had been taken from the US army field manual. They included
hooding, sensory deprivation, and physical and mental abuse.
"As we worked through the list of techniques, Myers became increasingly
hesitant and troubled," writes Sands. "Haynes and Rumsfeld had been able to
run rings around him."
Myers and his closest advisers were cut out of the decision-making process.
He did not know that Bush administration officials were changing the rules
allowing interrogation techniques, including the use of dogs, amounting to
torture.
"We never authorised torture, we just didn't, not what we would do," Myers
said. Sands comments: "He really had taken his eye off the ball ... he
didn't ask too many questions ... and kept his distance from the
decision-making process."
Larry Wilkerson, a former army officer and chief of staff to Colin Powell,
US secretary of state at the time, told the Guardian: "I do know that
Rumsfeld had neutralised the chairman [Myers] in many significant ways.
"The secretary did this by cutting [Myers] out of important communications,
meetings, deliberations and plans.
"At the end of the day, however, Dick Myers was not a very powerful chairman
in the first place, one reason Rumsfeld recommended him for the job".
He added: "Haynes, Feith, Yoo, Bybee, Gonzalez and - at the apex -
Addington, should never travel outside the US, except perhaps to Saudi
Arabia and Israel. They broke the law; they violated their professional
ethical code. In future, some government may build the case necessary to
prosecute them in a foreign court, or in an international court."
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2008/apr/19/guantanamo.usa/print
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